Linux on Power: Ready for Prime Time!

Did you know that Linux is the fastest-growing operating system on the planet? A recent IDC study shows that Linux is currently growing at 3.4 percent per year, and it has around 23 percent market share in the data center — almost double that of all UNIX systems combined. Linux has actually been supported on the IBM Power Systems platform for about 15 years, and has supported enterprise-class Tier 1 applications for over a decade. Today, eight of the world’s top 10 Web sites run on Linux, and over 90 percent of the world’s fastest supercomputers run on Linux, including IBM Watson.

IBM understands that many Power Systems clients are either running Linux in their enterprise or are planning for it in the near future. IBM has already made a significant investment in the Linux ecosystem (they are the fifth-largest contributor) and they have committed to invest another $1 billion in Linux research and development over the next few years. They have also opened five Linux Centers around the world to provide testing and demos.

Now that momentum is carrying over to the Power Systems platform. The new POWER8 processors were specifically designed and optimized to support workloads that run well on Linux, such as big data, cloud and analytics. In addition to running IBM i and AIX, Power Systems servers also support the SUSE, Red Hat and Ubuntu versions of Linux. There are even dedicated Linux on Power servers that provide industry-leading performance with better TCO and TCA than comparable x86 server offerings.

The OpenPOWER foundation is helping to bring innovative new technologies to the Power Systems platform faster than ever before. Power Systems supports Little Endian byte order, which makes application porting easier. PowerKVM allows Linux administrators to utilize their preexisting virtualization skills. Power also supports industry-leading open-source databases like EnterpriseDB and MariaDB.

If you are considering running new applications on Linux, you should strongly consider Power Systems as your platform of choice. It is the most reliable, scalable, secure, easy-to-use and cost-effective server family on the market. If you have any questions or would like additional information, please reach out to your Sirius client executive or Power Systems engineer.